Thus, a board of county commissioners with one vacancy is a legally constituted body capable of carrying out its legal duties with full constitutional authority, by reason of Art. XI, § 6, to appoint a qualified person to fill a vacancy on the board.

There is no cessation of county government. If the legally constituted board fails to carry out its constitutional duty, it may create a political hiatus (as distinguished from a legal one) for which the two members may be answerable to their constituents; but it does not create a situation in which the legislature may delegate to the governor a duty that the constitution requires must be performed by the board of county commissioners.

Can the governor legally take the decision out of the hands of the county commissioners? A forty year old Supreme Court decision seems to say no.

Any lawyers out there? I'm emailing Hugh Spitzer, one of the co-authors of the 2002 book that I'm citing above. He's at the UW, hopefully I'll get an answer from him quickly.

3 comments:

This seems to be the authority for the appointment http://tinyurl.com/cmzh2t

I didn't read the case you cited, but either this statute has been challenged and upheld by the Supremes or it hasn't in which case someone could potentially challenge it. Since it's in the statute, promulgated by the legislature, I sorta doubt that it could be stricken as I would imagine that the legislature ensured that it was compliant which you could see in any legislative history.

I took a tour of the legislative history of the RCW and constitutional amendment last night and couldn't come up with anything solid.

The section of the constitution in question was amended in 1967-68, right after Munro v. Todd, but it didnt' seem to address the governor's authority. Spitzer covers that amendment in the book, referring to it as "minor changes."

Also, the RCW regarding the procedure for filling a commission vacancy doesn't show any changes for 1968, which makes me think the constitutional amendment (#52) didn't have an impact on that process.